As the public-school student population continues to become more diverse, it becomes increasingly important to reevaluate longstanding policies that are targeted at addressing the needs of traditionally underserved students. To address the needs of such students, many districts have turned to various school choice policies. The public educational marketplace has expanded and diversified, providing families with many different types of school choice; yet magnet schools, one of the oldest forms of public school choice, continue to serve large numbers of students. This study seeks to examine the functionality of magnet schools in new demographic, legal, and policy contexts.To examine magnet schools in their modern-day context, I utilized data from Houston Independent School District (HISD). HISD is one of the nation's largest districts, and the district has over one-hundred magnet schools and serves a large number of traditionally underserved students. The dataset from HISD is a rich, student-level, longitudinal dataset with information for over 400,000 students across seven school years (2007/08 through 2013/14).The analysis is centered on two major outcomes: integration and student achievement. I assessed integration from magnet schools on four fronts: racial, socio-economic, linguistic, and achievement. I also used two perspectives to understand how magnet schools change the composition of schools and the district. The micro-level assessment analyzes individual participation in choice and looks at what student and school characteristics are related tochoosing a magnet school. The macro-level assessment aggregates the actions of individuals and looks at how compositions of schools and the districts change as students leave TPSs for magnet schools. I examine student achievement by looking for improvements in math and reading scores on a standardized exam. Multiple strategies are used to address the selection bias that arises from the nonrandom assignment of students, including the use of student fixed-effects to control for time-invariant unobservable variables as well as value-added modeling to account for prior achievement in addition to time-invariant unobservables. Much of the analysis is broken down by magnet type to better understand how different magnet policies influence the results.The major findings indicate magnet schools have little effect on integration of the district or on student achievement in math and reading. On average, magnet choosers are relatively advantaged as compared to the students in the district who do not choose a magnet school. This is reflected in the average composition of magnet schools as compared to that of TPSs. While magnet schools are more integrated than TPSs, there is little change in measures of segregation at the district level when looking at how segregation changes when students leave their zoned school for a nonzoned magnet school. Thus, magnet schools are moving advantaged students away from TPSs in the district. At the same time, the student achievement analysis provides little evidence of student achievement benefits from magnet schools. Most estimates point to a null or negative effect. While the evidence for integration and student achievement does not point to strong benefits from magnet schools, these results need to be put into context. A limited range of student outcomes was studied here. There could be other benefits to students from magnet schools. Additionally, magnet schools are most likely reducing the flow of advantaged students out of the district to other schools of choice, and these students are then mixed into schools that serve nonchoosers.
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